This invention relates generally to plastic fences and more particularly to a unitary preassembled fence panel formed from plastic boards secured together with a suitable adhesive.
Fencing has long been made from wood and metal in various decorative forms. Such fencing has many purposes from restraining the passage of animals to preserving the privacy of property and increasingly is provided as privacy fencing to prevent people on one side of the fence from viewing anything on the other side. Such privacy fencing tends to be expensive since it requires a large amount of material to completely occlude the area of the fence and may also present a problem that the fence appears different on each side, so that the fencing necessarily has a finished or outer side and unfinished or inner side.
Recent development of materials have involved the use of certain plastics such as polyvinyl chloride as fence materials because they can be easily fabricated by extrusion and by suitable compounding and coating present a finished surface that does not require frequent maintenance and painting.
While first efforts to utilize vinyl plastic as a fencing material tended to utilize existing construction and configurations using, in effect, hollow extruded vinyl boards in the place of wooden boards. However, it soon became apparent that vinyl fencing could be utilized with different configuration and materials and in fact could be made quite strong utilizing wood and metal inserts as shown in the present inventor""s prior U.S. Pat. No. 5,938,184.
However, this method of construction while producing a strong and durable completed fence, required a high degree of labor in assembling the fence as well as a relatively long time period to complete the construction. Furthermore, although the members could be pre-cut to speed assembly, they still required individual fitting of the parts and assembly in the correct order as well as the use of a multiplicity of fasteners often of different sizes and appearances.
The preferred embodiment of the present invention provides an improved construction in which all of the fence components between the posts are preassembled as a unitary panel at the factory to allow rapid mounting and assembly on the appropriate fence posts.
Another feature of the invention is that the fence appears the same from both sides so that it can be mounted either side out or in and will have the same appearance.
Another feature of the invention is that it does not require any fasteners which mar the external appearance or give a different appearance from opposite sides.
Another feature of the invention is that it can be preassembled at the factory utilizing a minimum of different extrusions and is preassembled using a suitable glue or cement to secure the individual board members together without other fasteners.
Still another feature of the invention is that the resulting panel is extremely strong and rigid and can be made in a number of different constructions to give different types of decorative appearance for greater variety and can be manufactured in different sizes of panel heights and widths as desired for the finished fence.